How to do technical and engineering PR in 2011

The world of technical and engineering PR has changed beyond recognition in the last decade. With every year that’s passed, return on investment in the form of print clippings has decreased as a result of the number of trade magazines falling and the number of pages in most titles diminishing. However, this change has brought about some good news as well: online opportunities have become much greater and are only likely to increase.

Traditionally, print clippings in trade magazines resulted in lots of inquiries about a company’s products or services. However, only a small portion of those leads actually translated into sales. In 2011, the situation has changed; where once you got thirty clippings as the result of a single good article, now you might get one or two. However, although the overall number of sales leads may have decreased, a much larger percentage of them actually turn into profitable relationships.

The fundamental difference is that there should now be a plethora of information sources available to a potential customer that means they don’t need to enquire. They can look on your Web site, read your datasheets online or follow your Twitter feed. They can read about you in online, e-mail or offline publications, read your Blog or subscribe to your RSS feed. They don’t need to ring you or send you an e-mail unless they are actually interested.

The trouble is if you don’t have a Blog, online or offline articles published about you, social media outlets, RSS feeds or well populated Web sites then they can’t find the information they need.

If you are still only doing PR the old way, potential customers will find it a lot harder to enquire.

So, in a series of upcoming blog posts we are going to look at how you can make PR work in this massively changed landscape. Because we really do think PR has changed fundamentally and we really do think you need to change what you are doing as well.

Richard Stone

Stone Junction is a cool technical PR agency based in Stafford. We work for all sorts of businesses, with a particular focus on technology, technical and engineering companies. We like being sent cake and biscuits by clients, journalists and prospects.

Contact Stone Junction

If you are a journalist with a question about a Stone Junction client, e-mail sayhello@stonejunction.co.uk. If you are a prospective client, trying to contact Stone Junction about our services, use any of the methods below to reach Richard Stone, the managing director.